A conversation about depression with my Carolyn, my mom, Liz, my sister, and Jonah, my nephew.
Statement
One of my favorite documentaries this semester was Time Indefinite. I loved the way that Ross McElwee was able to examine his life through the medium of film. It helped that everyone around him had become used to him carrying a camera around, and were able to act normally with it. In terms of the actual content, there were a lot of aspects that I felt a personal connection with, such as when he talks about his struggles with his father’s death. I was drawn to the way that the film, which could be classified under Nichol’s Participatory mode, was able to present emotions and the common trials of life.
In preparing for my final project, I wanted to create a documentary that primarily borrowed from Nichol’s Participatory Mode. I’ve always felt particularly partial to documentaries that feature the filmmaker as one of the main actors trying to navigate the issue in front of them, such as Time Indefinite.
My plan for this project was initially going to be just sitting down with my mother and talking with her about the history of mental health in our family. It’s a topic that I’ve become more interested in over the past few years as I’ve come to understand my own relationship with mental health. I’ve known that she’s struggled with depression for a long time, and now that I’ve started to have my own experiences with depression, I wanted to understand our family history with mental health better.
When I asked my mom if she’d be willing to talk to me about mental health, she agreed, but also suggested that I invite my sister Liz to talk with us. When I asked Liz, she thought that it would be a good idea to invite my nephew Jonah. In the end, I went from having a conversation between myself and my mom to a discussion with my mom, sister, and nephew; three generations of a family with their own stories about mental health.
In approaching the project, I wanted to go with another audio documentary. As an audio engineer, the medium of sound seems like a great way to get a lot of information out into the open in a short amount of time. For the type of topic that I was talking about, I thought that an audio doc would be the best way to stay personal with my subjects. If I had a camera in the way, I don’t think that I, as one of the participants in the conversation, would have been able to connect in the same way. Since I didn’t have anything in between me and my family, we were able to be more comfortable with the whole situation. Knowing my mom especially, she would have been more uncomfortable on camera versus just on an audio recorder.
Another advantage of sticking with the medium of an audio doc is that I don’t have to worry about a video to sync up the audio to. I was able to take clips and cut out moments of silence or filler words that don’t add anything to the message. Admittedly, since I didn’t have a visual aspect of the project, there might have been valuable non-verbal communication with facial expressions and body language. However, I feel like in terms of pure communication I was able to cram more into the 7 minutes than I would have been able to if I had been limited by the visuals.
There are a lot of ways that I could have made this documentary from a documentary mode perspective. I primarily edited this from the aspect of the participatory mode, but I also could have made the documentary from an observational mode if I had asked different questions or maybe gone more for a reflexive editing style. I also liked the example of reflexive films from class, the primary example being Agnes Varda’s Faces Places. There’s a certain beauty to me of acknowledging the medium that you’re working with and addressing what you’re doing with those you’re working. I appreciate how you can be transparent about what you’re making with those you’re making it with.
In an early draft of the project, I had a section where my mom was asking what the project would end up looking like, asking if I was going to edit the conversation down or what. I wanted to keep this part of the documentary, but in favor of a shorter, more concise project I cut mentions of the actual process of documenting the proceedings and focused more on the actual content of mental health discussions.
If I had more time, I would have incorporated the above to include the reflexive mode of documentary, but with the lack of time I decided focusing on the aspects of the film that fit into the participatory mode would do the most benefit to the project.
I had opportunity throughout the recording to ask my family about their own experiences with mental health. In addition to that, there were a few times in the final edit that I put in moments where I was talking about my own personal stories of discovering my depression and having my mom help me.
If I were to re-edit the project (with the expectation of having more time), I might have considered editing the project in the poetic mode. There’s a lot of room to take time in between statements and put some sound effects and music to good use to really tell the story of dealing with mental health.
Overall, I really appreciated my family for being willing to engage with me and make this project a reality. In inserting myself into the narrative, I feel like I was able to make a compelling story, one where you can see a man interact with his family and grow closer to them through understanding. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about my family that I learned through doing this project. I wasn’t able to add everything that I learned due to time constraints, but I do feel like I’ve come to understand my family better, especially my sister and my nephew. If there’s anything that I could encourage people to do, it’s create a space where you can openly talk with your family about hard things.
